VMware Cloud Foundation - Configure the BGP Keep Alive Timer to 4 and Hold Down Timer to 12 between the top of tack switches and the Tier-0 gateway.

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

Design Decision: Configure the BGP Keep Alive Timer to 4 and Hold Down Timer to 12 between the top of tack switches and the Tier-0 gateway.

Resolution

Design Justification: Provides a balance between failure detection between the top of rack switches and the Tier-0 gateway and overburdening the top of rack switches with keep-alive traffic.

Design Implication: By using longer timers to detect if a router is not responding, the data about such a router remains in the routing table longer. As a result, the active router continues to send traffic to a router that is down.

This design decision is supported in the following Domains. 
•    Management Domain
•    VI Workload Domain

This design decision is supported on VVD version 5.0 and higher.

Additional Information

Please reference the VMware Cloud Foundation version you are running and if this design decision is applicable to you. 

VMware Validated Design (VVD) Bill of Materials